{"id":5430,"date":"2009-06-01T21:52:20","date_gmt":"2009-06-02T02:52:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/?p=5430"},"modified":"2009-06-01T21:52:20","modified_gmt":"2009-06-02T02:52:20","slug":"supreme-court-weighs-in-on-issue-preclusion-in-criminal-cases","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/2009\/06\/supreme-court-weighs-in-on-issue-preclusion-in-criminal-cases\/","title":{"rendered":"Supreme Court Weighs in on Issue Preclusion in Criminal Cases"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"supreme_court_building\"The Supreme Court managed to reach a unanimous decision today in a death penalty case, Bobby v. Bies<\/a>. Back in 1996, while reviewing Bies’ sentence, the Ohio Supreme Court noted that the defendant’s “mild to borderline mental retardation merit[s] some weight in mitigation,” but affirmed his sentence anyway.\u00a0 Six years later, of course, the United States Supreme Court ruled in Atkins v. Virginia<\/em> that the Eighth Amendment bars execution of the mentally retarded.\u00a0 The Ohio courts sensibly responded to Atkins <\/em>by ordering a hearing to determine whether Bies was indeed retarded for Eighth Amendment purposes.\u00a0 But Bies preempted the hearing by persuading a federal court that the issue had already been decided in his favor by the Ohio Supreme Court and that relitigation was precluded by the Double Jeopardy Clause.\u00a0 After this decision was affirmed by the Sixth Circuit, the Supreme Court today reversed, holding there was no Double Jeopardy bar to the proposed Atkins <\/em>hearing.<\/p>\n

A couple of reactions.\u00a0 First, as a unanimous decision in such a politically charged area as the death penalty, Bies <\/em>is a nice reminder — amidst the high emotions and free-flowing hyperbole surrounding the Sotomayor nomination — that justices from across the ideological spectrum can and (at least at times) do set aside policy preferences to reach consensus right answers.<\/p>\n

Second, although I’m pretty well convinced the Court got the right answer with respect to Bies, the opinion swept more broadly than it had to, perhaps unnecessarily limiting the Double Jeopardy issue preclusion doctrine. Is this one of those instances of “easy cases make bad law”?<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

The Ohio Supreme Court’s statement about Bies’ mental limitations was a short comment made in passing, and obviously not directed to the legal standard in Atkins <\/em>(which was still six years away from being decided).\u00a0 Bies was playing a “gotcha” game with the Ohio courts.\u00a0 His claim could have, and should have, been rejected based on the simple fact that the Ohio Supreme Court did not purport to speak to any specific question of fact at issue in the Atkins <\/em>hearing.\u00a0 Instead, the Court rejected Bies’ claim based, at least in part, on the fact that “the courts’ statements regarding Bies’ mental capacity were not necessary to the judgments affirming his death sentence” (slip op. at 8-9).\u00a0 The statement on mental capacity did not trigger issue preclusion because it was merely a “subsidiary finding that, standing alone, is not outcome determinative.\u00a0 Issue preclusion cannot transform Bies’ loss at the sentencing phase into a partial victory” (9).<\/p>\n

The import of Bies <\/em>seems to be that defendants cannot invoke Double Jeopardy issue preclusion unless they won on some ultimate question in an earlier proceeding.\u00a0 This rule, of course, has the formalist virtue of easy administration.\u00a0 But the seminal case on Double Jeopardy issue preclusion, Ashe v. Swenson<\/em>, famously disavowed formalism in favor of “realism and rationality.”<\/p>\n

So, here is a hypothetical variation on Bies <\/em>in which “realism and rationality” would at least arguably favor the defendant.\u00a0 Imagine that the Ohio courts had not merely made a vague, conclusory reference to Bies’ mental limitations, but instead made the specific finding that “an IQ test administered after the offense establishes that Bies’ IQ is 65.”\u00a0 In a later, post-Atkins <\/em>hearing in state court, the state introduces a different IQ test showing an IQ of 71 and tries to take advantage of the rebuttable presumption recognized in Ohio law “that a defendant is not mentally retarded if his or her IQ is above 70” (5).\u00a0 Now it doesn’t feel quite so much like a game of “gotcha” when the defendant invokes issue preclusion.\u00a0 Or, make the scenario even more favorable to the defendant and imagine that the state actively litigated the IQ question pre-Atkins <\/em>and lost. Or, better still, the Ohio courts specifically found the test showing the IQ of 71 to be unreliable for some reason.\u00a0 Do we really want to give the state a second opportunity to litigate IQ after it lost so decisively once?<\/p>\n

Now, perhaps even in the hypo, the right answer is just to decide the IQ issue again anyway.\u00a0 I can readily admit the disadvantages of case-by-case litigation of the reliability of “subsidiary findings” in earlier proceedings, and a balancing of the various competing values might well point in the direction of the bright-line rule endorsed in Bies.<\/em> But a little more “judicial modesty” by the Court <\/em>could have easily saved the question for another day.<\/p>\n

Cross posted at PrawfsBlawg<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Supreme Court managed to reach a unanimous decision today in a death penalty case, Bobby v. Bies. Back in 1996, while reviewing Bies’ sentence, the Ohio Supreme Court noted that the defendant’s “mild to borderline mental retardation merit[s] some weight in mitigation,” but affirmed his sentence anyway.\u00a0 Six years later, of course, the United […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ocean_post_layout":"","ocean_both_sidebars_style":"","ocean_both_sidebars_content_width":0,"ocean_both_sidebars_sidebars_width":0,"ocean_sidebar":"","ocean_second_sidebar":"","ocean_disable_margins":"enable","ocean_add_body_class":"","ocean_shortcode_before_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_after_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_before_header":"","ocean_shortcode_after_header":"","ocean_has_shortcode":"","ocean_shortcode_after_title":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_bottom":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_bottom":"","ocean_display_top_bar":"default","ocean_display_header":"default","ocean_header_style":"","ocean_center_header_left_menu":"","ocean_custom_header_template":"","ocean_custom_logo":0,"ocean_custom_retina_logo":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_height":0,"ocean_header_custom_menu":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_family":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_subset":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_size":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_unit":"px","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_line_height":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_unit":"","ocean_menu_typo_spacing":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_unit":"","ocean_menu_link_color":"","ocean_menu_link_color_hover":"","ocean_menu_link_color_active":"","ocean_menu_link_background":"","ocean_menu_link_hover_background":"","ocean_menu_link_active_background":"","ocean_menu_social_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_links_color":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_color":"","ocean_disable_title":"default","ocean_disable_heading":"default","ocean_post_title":"","ocean_post_subheading":"","ocean_post_title_style":"","ocean_post_title_background_color":"","ocean_post_title_background":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_image_position":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_attachment":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_repeat":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_size":"","ocean_post_title_height":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay":0.5,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay_color":"","ocean_disable_breadcrumbs":"default","ocean_breadcrumbs_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_separator_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_hover_color":"","ocean_display_footer_widgets":"default","ocean_display_footer_bottom":"default","ocean_custom_footer_template":"","ocean_post_oembed":"","ocean_post_self_hosted_media":"","ocean_post_video_embed":"","ocean_link_format":"","ocean_link_format_target":"self","ocean_quote_format":"","ocean_quote_format_link":"post","ocean_gallery_link_images":"on","ocean_gallery_id":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[30,24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5430","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-criminal-justice","category-us-supreme-court","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5430","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5430"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5430\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5430"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5430"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5430"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}